


The Six Thatchers (Alternative)

by 221b_hound



Series: The Pure and Simple Truth [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canonical Character Death, Episode: s04e01 The Six Thatchers, Major Character Injury, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-10-23 20:28:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10726629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: There are always consequences.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'll add to the tags as I go.
> 
> My thanks To Ariane Devere and [her transcripts](https://arianedevere.dreamwidth.org/62358.html), which I've used for research and some of the dialogue. She's saved me from having to watch it again.

There were consequences for that Christmas. Of course there were consequences.

A hearing. A D Notice over the whole incident. Present, those codenamed Antarctica, Langdale, Porlock, Love, Agra, Maiwand and Bunsen.

(John had been inappropriately chuffed with his code name, and had laughed for an inappropriately long time at Sherlock’s. Sherlock pretended he’d never heard of the Muppets, and swore some kind of deadly revenge on Antarctica.)

A cover-up of course. It wouldn’t do for anyone – especially not the Prime Minister or other elected parliamentarians – to know how close they had come to Great Britain being firmly pwned, as the young folk said. Her Majesty and Her Government, reduced to being Charles Augustus Magnussen’s bitch.

Mary Watson was hardly going to receive the thanks of a grateful nation, but neither was she going to prison.

She sat through the hearing with a hand protectively across her belly. John sat beside her, holding her hand and looking properly civilised. Sherlock ate gingernut biscuits and admired how John could fake being civilised while radiating the hostility of a sheathed scimitar.

Mycroft Holmes made his case. Langdale and Love debated the issue while Porlock sat there pointedly not taking the minutes. Agra was pardoned without ever facing trial. Maiwand, with great relief, kissed his wife on the cheek.

Bunsen, fed up with the time spent for a conclusion he’d already foreseen, suggested it was a nice day and deduced everyone’s preferred activities just to kill the boredom. Langdale (stroll) and Love ( _al fresco_ lunch) expressed their irritation. Porlock admitted that, yes, she rather liked ice lollies. She missed Mivvis.

At home, Agra, Maiwand and Bunsen laughed that this was behind them now. Bad dreams notwithstanding.

Sherlock played his violin while John and Mary danced. He valiantly played on when they abandoned dancing with each other to bracket him, bodies pressed close to his. Swaying. Hands sliding over his thighs and stomach and chest, his back and ribs. When they rubbed and squeezed his arse and the bulge between his legs, he gave up making music with the violin and took up making music with them.

Naked on Sherlock’s bed, they kissed and mouthed and licked and sucked. They pressed close and moved against each other. Whispers hot and sultry. Filthy talk and sweet nothings. Moans and panting and _yes yes yes_ and legs spreading, backs arching, mouths open with pleasure.

Afterwards, Sherlock in the centre of the bed, Mary draped over the left side of him, John the right, Sherlock remembers thinking how strange it was to be so happy.

“I love you,” he’d said, sodden with serotonin, kissing Mary’s brow, kissing John’s.

“Love you,” Mary said, kissing his chest.

“Love you. Bunsen.” John giggled. That set off Mary. Long-suffering Sherlock insisted on many more kisses before he was mollified.

Much, much later, when the grief had abated, and everything that sprang from it was over, this was one of Sherlock’s favourite memories.

Agra and Maiwand and Bunsen. Happy.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They were a great team, Mary and John and Sherlock. Harry saw it too. And then there came the baby, whom Sherlock sort of named. But there was also a man who had bad dreams.

John leaned against the counter of the repaired kitchen and, for the fun of it, tried to see what Sherlock would have made of it, if it had been a crime scene. The scent of burnt metal and linoleum had long faded. The insurance had paid for a complete refit of appliances, floorings, cupboards, the lot. Even new glass and frames for the windows that had shattered. Thank God for cracked glass, he thought. It had broken in the heat of the flames; the sound had woken Harry from her groggy, drug-induced sleep. She’d left the house before she even realised that it was burning. Nothing much to see here now, as evidence of the attempt on Harry's life.

Harry handed him a cup of builders brew tea. No subtlety, Harry. She’d always made tea strong enough to chew. John was out of the habit of enjoying it that way. He sipped and grimaced. Yep, and she’d shovelled in the usual four teaspoons of sugar to make it palatable.

“Thanks,” he said, raising the cup in a salute.

“Fuck you,” she laughed, clinking her mug with his. “When did you get precious about your tea? Is this how your fancy boy makes it for you?”

“On the whole I make my own tea.”

“The fuck you do.” She took a swig of her own milky, strong, too-sweet tea and grimaced. “Christ this is swill.  I’d top it up with rum if I didn’t think I’d wake up with the house on fire and someone trying to frame me for murder again.” The sardonic tilt of her mouth froze. She blew out a breath. It was still too soon for that joke, apparently, even by their family’s standards of black humour.

“Who knew,” she said quietly, “That all it would take to make me sober up is a fucking gaslighting fake girlfriend.”

“Harry…”

“It’s good. I’m good. Giles and Leandra have invited me up for the weekend again. Leandra keeps baking me fruit pies. They don’t lock the drinks cabinet and they don’t tick me off for smoking. Giles reckons he’s going to cure me of my allergy to kindness if it kills him. I’ve had a few spectacular melt-downs, and they just keep on being nice. How do you thank people like that, Johnnie?”

John wondered the same thing. He hadn’t seen his sister this well, this engaged in the present, in a long time.

“Of course,” Harry continued, “Leandra swears that after her three, I’m a walk in the park. How is he by the way, your boyfriend?”

“Fine,” he said, refusing to rise to the bait, sipping on the terrible tea instead.

“And your wife?”

“Good, cheers.”

“You’re no fun anymore, Johnnie. You used to go purple and splutter when I talked about your love life.”

“That was before my wife and I got a boyfriend,” he said, still sipping nonchalantly.

That made her wheeze with laughter. “Good on you, little bro. I can’t keep a wife, but look at you, collecting significant others like a magnet. Clara always did call you Mr Sex Appeal. Never saw it myself.”

John kept on sipping. Harry got like this when she was agitated. Pushing and needling. He wondered how the Holmeses had managed her moods the two months she’d lived with them.

“So how was it then,” she asked abruptly. “Collecting his ashes?”

John shrugged. “It’s…done. I think that’s the best that can be said for it. I’ve had the ashes interred at the cemetery and a plaque put on it. Just his name and the dates. Anything else felt like hypocrisy.”

“Do you feel bad, that you don’t feel bad about it?”

“No. He was a bastard. He wasn’t even an inventive bastard. I feel bad that’s how he died.” He abandoned the tea and looked at his sister, but her mask was firmly in place. “I feel bad that you were there. How are you, Harry?”

Harry flexed her free hand between them. The scarring from the burns she’d received trying to open the locked car door, to free their father from the burning car, had left shiny patches of skin in places, but most of the burns hadn’t been deep. She could move her fingers. She could use her hands.

“Might even dredge up that old bass guitar of mine,” she said. “It’s not too late to pull birds with the old rock chick routine, is it? Why am I asking you? Your days of pulling are over. You’ve got your hands full.”

“You’re having a lot of fun with that, aren’t you?”

“Not as much fun as you.” A ribald wink. John was very nearly flustered, and Harry barked a laugh. “So much fun,” she said in a filthy tone. Time to change the subject.

“How’s mum?”

Harry subsided. “Same old, you know? I told her Dad had passed. Not how. She keeps forgetting. I gave her some of Mrs Holmes’s fruit cake, though, and she was dead impressed. So I told her all about Sherlock and you.” She laughed when he looked startled. “Not your love life, dickhead. The cases and stuff. Now she thinks you’re a policeman. Ah, fuck.” Harry put her tea down with a heavy clink on the new counter surface. “Fuck. I’m sorry Johnnie.”

Harry never used to apologise for her insensitivity. It was unsettling.

“It’s okay. I was thinking. Maybe. After Mary’s had the baby, we could visit her.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great idea. Might help her see who you really are, eh?” She grinned, apology mixed with encouragement and a touch of her usual inappropriate glee. “John Watson, Crime Fighter!”

John’s phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID and answered it. “Mary?”

“Sherlock’s got a case and he’s gone haring off to Falmouth.”

“Text me the address.”

“Sent. I’ll call in fifteen with a summary whatever I can find online, okay?”

John rang off and shoved his phone back into his pocket.

Harry was looking at him, eyebrows raised. “You three’ve got a good system going there, haven’t you?”

John grinned, because yes, they did. Mary running HQ and research; Sherlock and him, agents in the field.

“Off you pop then,” said Harry, before doing something unprecedented. She kissed John’s cheek. “Go and kick the criminal classes in the balls.”

John only puffed a laugh, kissed Harry’s cheek in return, and dashed out to do just that.

*

_Ammo. Ammo._

The man is curled into a ball on the narrow bed. He is dreaming.

They are not good dreams.

He is curled on the bed because his spine isn’t straight any more. Too long hunched in small spaces where he couldn’t stand up, couldn’t lie down.

The fingers of his left hand are curled because they were broken and healed, broken and healed, so many times that this is as straight as they’ll go.

He can walk, though. Even with toes missing from the right foot and the way his ankle twists inward – another break not healed correctly – he can walk. He walked right out of that hellhole, after someone left the door unlocked (and everyone was dead, lying in pools of blood in the rooms, the halls, the tunnel leading to the river, so much blood, and he was only sorry he hadn’t killed any of them himself).

It took a long time to earn a passage home. All right. Steal a passage home. No passport, of course. He hadn’t had one on the mission. No ID. Still. A resourceful man knows more than one way to find money, the right people to pay.  By rail to France. By fishing boat across the channel. Gravesend. Home.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing here. He just missed it. England. Home. The sky. The grass. The voices.

But he wishes the voice in his head would leave him alone. All those whispers he heard over the years they kept him. The whispers, the jokes, the gossip. About the Betrayal.

_Ammo. Ammo._

He wakes, gasping, to pain. He’s used to that. He wakes to tears. He’s used to that too.

He wakes to a name he hasn’t thought of in a long time and thinks: oh. Yes. That’s what I came back for. That’s who I came back for.

_Agra._

He pushes through the pain, pushes himself out of bed, pushes himself to his feet. In his hand is the gun – he sleeps with it under the pillow. He can’t sleep without it now.

And Ajay goes looking for revenge.

*

The facts, briefly, are these.

Agra only ever lost one agent in the field. His code name was Mongoose. His real name was Ajay Sastry.

In 2009, Ajay’s rescue mission to Tbilisi failed spectacularly.

A lot of people died, including the hostages: the ambassador and her husband.

Ajay vanished without a trace.

Later, all the Department knew was that Ajay and the backup team were either deeply unlucky or the victims of treachery. An investigation suggested the latter, but without evidence, they concluded the former. Agra was officially exonerated of blame.

Agra didn’t exonerate herself entirely. Someone, she knew, must know what happened. She began to pour over the records, over the reports and the recordings. She pulled apart every aspect of the mission.

If the answer was there, she couldn’t find it.

The Tbilisi mission report passed over the desk of a certain government official, who saw rather a lot of seemingly random, unconnected reports. 

This official, who had few ambitions beyond _for God’s sake, give me useful work, keep my mind engaged_ and had refused honours and titles, was the country’s most indispensable public servant. Every department’s conclusions and most of their lesser reports were passed to him and he absorbed every detail. He had made himself essential with his speciality – omniscience. His vast acumen and holistic comprehension meant that not a policy was determined without his input.

Some thought he was the head of MI6. They placed too limited a value on his services to the Crown.

So when Mycroft Holmes heard, through one of his thousands of connections, that MI6’s most highly skilled handler sought to resign, burnt out by her only failure, he intervened. Loath to lose her considerable talents, Mycroft assigned Mary Morstan to the pool of analysts, away from the field but essential to the success of many missions. At times, he employed her directly as a researcher.

Then Mycroft’s brother, Sherlock Holmes, was forced to fake his own death in order to dismantle James Moriarty’s international empire. The younger brother, more impulsive than the elder, refused to work with the handlers assigned to him. In desperation, Mycroft pulled Mary Morstan out of her sort-of retirement.

Agra brought his brother home.

But we already know that story.

*

The cases came and went after the Falmouth drowning-in-sand. Stimulating, exciting, fascinating.  Life was full, life was good. John’s blog was teeming with cases, and those were only the ones he wrote up. The Mona Lisa. The missing horseshoe and the Bright Beach deckchair. The Wrong Thumb. The Circus Torso, The Canary Trainer.  The Cardiac Arrest. The Duplicate Man (Sherlock was way too vindicated that this time it really wasn’t twins.)

And after cases, there was the triumphant return. The fizz in the blood, the adrenalin, the joy. _Did it again. We three. We did it again._ Sometimes caresses, sometimes sex, sometimes three, sometimes two. Sometimes holding onto each other, shaking with a near miss, after the fact. Giddy with defeating the odds. Again. Again!

John was laughing as he and Sherlock climbed the stairs. “Some assassin.”

“Well, as assassins go, it did nearly kill us.” Sherlock was laughing too.

“A _jellyfish_.”

“I am aware.”

“You can’t arrest a jellyfish.”

“You could try.”

“We _did_ try.”

They reached the landing as the door was thrown open. Mary stood in the frame, leaning on it, puffing.

“Good timing,” she said.

“Shit,” said John. He reached for his phone, gave up that idea and shouted down the stairs to Mrs Hudson. “MRS HUDSON WE NEED YOUR CAR!”

Sherlock reached for Mary, puffing air out in unison with her, Lamaze-style, just as they’d all three practiced together.

“I DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THE UPHOLSTERY. Sorry. Sorry. Mrs Hudson, I’m sorry. I promise you, Mary won’t give birth on the back seat…”

“Don’t make… promises… I don’t know… if I can keep,” puffed Mary.

Mrs Hudson ran up the stairs. John held out his hand for the keys. Mrs Hudson just gestured them to help Mary down the stairs. “I’m driving,” she said, “John goes in the back with Mary. He’s the doctor, dear.” This to Sherlock as he began to protest. “You can navigate the quickest route.”

At the hospital, Mrs Hudson waited with Sherlock. Sherlock, hands clasped, stared at his shoes. He was running through permutations of the jellyfish case. Permutations of the Deckchair case, and the Thumb case, and the Mona Lisa case.

Anything but think about John and Mary having their baby. Without him. Well, he wasn’t needed, was he? Surplus to requirements by every societal measure. Whatever John and Mary had said. That was then. This was…

John appeared. He looked like he’d received a massive blow to the head, but had contrived to like it.

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock stared.  John’s hands rock steady. His blue eyes wide. His expression… soft. Open. Full of love. For Mary. For the baby.

“Sherlock?”

John. Veteran. Doctor. Adventurer. Friend. Husband. Lover. Father.

“Sherlock!”

“I think John wants you, dear.”

Sherlock stood. Took a step forward. John beamed at him.

“That’s it,” said John, “Come on. Mary’s asking for you.” He held out his hand. Held it out. Held it out.

Sherlock took John’s hand and they fell into step together, side by side. At the room, John darted in first, tugging Sherlock after him.

Mary was on the bed. Pale. Exhausted. Exultant. A wrinkly pink grub was in her arms in a pink blanket.

“Gendered bedding for babies. Have you ever seen anything more ridiculous?”

Mary pressed her nose to the baby’s hair. “What Sherlock means, sweetheart, is ‘hello’.”

“Hello… Watson,” he said. “How can you not have chosen a name yet?”

“We hadn’t met her yet,” said Mary reasonably. John was sitting beside her, gazing at his wife and daughter with such dazed, besotted happiness that he hadn’t noticed yet he was crying.

John turned his brimming eyes onto Sherlock. “Stop being an arse. Say hello to our daughter.”

“I’ve said hello to your daughter.”

“No, Sherlock,” said John, with the kind of calmness he usually reserved for the battlefield, or for when Sherlock was being obtuse about social niceties. “ _Our_ daughter.”

Sherlock blinked. He blinked again.

“Sherlock,” said John, exasperated and fond and patient. “I thought you understood. Mary and I have told you, so many times. You died on me once. I know what I lost. I know what I got back. I know what I want. What I have. _We_ know. It’s the three of us. Always. You, me, Mary. And now… her. Little Watson.” He huffed a laugh. “We really do have to decide on a name.”

Sherlock approached the bed and leaned over and kissed Mary’s cheek. He kissed the baby’s forehead. “Hello, Watson,” he said again, a whisper. “Welcome to the mad house. We have a lot of fun, here.”

“Catherine?” said John.

Mary left off smiling indulgently at Sherlock gazing at the baby. “We’ve gone off that.”

“Have we?”

“Yeah.”

“You know what I think,” said Sherlock, who was still busy examining the child for the traits that apparently came from her mother, and those from her father.

“Sherlock isn’t a girl’s name,” said John and Mary together, but Mary was grinning. “We could call her Shirley,” she suggested.

“Ugh, no.” Sherlock straightened up, brushing the awful idea away with a gesture. He halted, his eye arrested by a print on the wall. A reproduction of _The Soul of the Rose_ , by John William Waterhouse. The sort of thing he normally detested. A dowdy woman sniffing a rose. Big deal. Romantic, sensual, melancholy. A woman dreaming of a lost love, it was said. Such sentimental nonsense.

“You know,” he said, still staring at the picture. “People romanticise flowers. They’re as necessary to life as crops, water and air, of course. Without flowers and the bees, plant life fails to thrive. The world dies, and we have nothing. Yet we persist in reading them as signifiers of romance. Or goodness. As embellishments. Their colour and their sweet scent are all about attracting the bees. But perhaps they’re right after all. I don’t believe in a God, but we owe our existence to the flowers. The rose that woman’s snuffling at: it’s essential to life. It doesn’t have to be beautiful too. Why not treat it as something extra? Something good.”

He blinked. Turned to John and Mary and Little Watson. “What?” John and Mary were looking damp around the edges again. Little Watson, the only sensible one, was asleep, her little mouth as dainty as a rosebud.

They named her Rosamund. _Rose of the world_. But everyone called her Rosie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Soul of the Rose by John William Waterhouse  
> 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One of Rosie's godparents has that title because no other official one can be granted him. And the days and the weeks and the months follow, and Rosie grows - and a crooked man, lost for so long, tries to find his way home.

_In the months and years after it was all over, John remembered one thing above all the others._

_The light._

_Mary had been strong and brave and smart and beautiful and sardonic and funny and loving. But most of all, she had been a lighthouse. She had guided him to safety when he thought he was about to break with Sherlock’s loss. She brought Sherlock home too, a beacon. She brought them clients, offering advice, support, light and hope._

_When he missed her most, he thought of her like that. Strong, bright, brave. A light in the darkness._

*

John bounced his baby daughter in his arms and the only reason he relinquished her to Molly for a cuddle is that he wanted someone else to see up close how utterly perfect and gorgeous Rosie was. Molly was clearly and appropriately besotted because she was herself reluctant to give the baby up into the arms of Mrs Hudson.

“We’d love for you both to be godparents,” John said.

Mrs Hudson’s face lit up! “Oh, John, that’s lovely! Oh, she can call me Gran. Can she? I’d love her to call me Gran! Who’s my little Rosie rose?” She cooed at the baby, “You are! And I’m your Gran.” She kissed the soft blonde crown and Rosie burbled.

Molly beamed at John. “Really? Oh, but Sherlock…?”

“Him too. Of course he is.” John grinned over his shoulder at Mary and Sherlock by the fireplace.

“Stop texting,” Mary said to Sherlock, but her grin was impish, “We promised you cake, and Greg will be here in a minute so you can tell him in person about the odd socks and arresting the brother-in-law.”

Sherlock stopped texting. “I hate parties.”

“I know, love, but it’s this or have everyone we know visit piecemeal over the next month to meet her, and frankly I don’t know if I could stand it.”

“Hmm.”

She folded a hand over his. “Are you all right?”

“Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be all right?”

“You know you’re her father too, but I’m not allowed to have a harem in this country…”

“Harem?”

“Behave or I’ll put you both in Aladdin costumes and make you do my bidding.”

Sherlock’s speculative smile showed that misbehaviour had moved right to the top of his To Do list. Mary laughed. “I’ll grant you three wishes if you’re very, very good.”

“And what if I’m very, very bad?”

“You and John both get three wishes. And so do I.”

Sherlock grinned and tried to hide his grin because he knew it gave him away even to Mrs Hudson (or especially to her). “Fine. Despite the fact that God is a ludicrous fiction dreamt up by inadequates who abnegate all responsibility to an invisible magic friend, and in the absence of English law allowing me any other official standing, I will be Rosie’s godfather.”

Mary kissed him on the cheek and then on the mouth, and then again, before John appeared, sliding one arm around Mary’s waist, the other around Sherlock’s.

“All good over here?”

“Never better,” Sherlock said.

“He’s picturing you in a fez and Aladdin waistcoat and nothing else at all,” whispered Mary. Sherlock confirmed it with a lascivious twinkle.

“Who cares about context,” John murmured, “As long as I get to rub the magic lantern.”

While Mary giggled and John waggled his eyebrows, Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Your _double entrendres_ are worse than the puns on your blog.”

“All right, if you _don’t_ want me to rub your magic lantern…”

“I never said that.”

The doorbell rang.

“And that’ll be Greg or Harry,” said John loudly, retreating to answer the door.

Rosie began to grizzle. Sherlock swooped over and scooped her up from Mrs Hudson. He crooned the soothing notes of a lullaby to her, pretending he didn’t see the ridiculously soppy looks Mrs Hudson, Molly and Mary all gave him, until he could hand Rosie to her mother.

“He’s so good with her,” Mrs Hudson stage-whispered to Molly.

“He _is_ her other dad,” Molly stage-whispered back.

Sherlock, his back to them, went still and his eyes luminous as he looked at Mary jogging Rosie in her arms.

“Have some cake,” Mary advised when Sherlock seemed unable to move or speak.

“Yes. Cake. Cake. Cake everyone? Everyone likes cake.”

And so Greg and Harry, who had arrived together, found Sherlock shoving plates of cake into their hands.

To Greg, Sherlock said, “The socks are odd, you need to arrest the brother in law, and for God’s sake, apologise to Molly for being so uselessly busy all the time or better yet, make some time to be with her. You pined long enough. Don’t screw it up now.”

He supposed he should have done that more quietly than in a stage whisper but at least later Greg took Molly to a quiet corner and apologised sincerely and Molly agreed to try dinner again. So that was something.

Harry seemed afraid to hold the baby. Finally, she agreed, with John standing close beside her.

“You won’t drop her,” John said.

Harry looked at Rosie’s blue eyes and said, “Hi, kid. I’m your Auntie Harry.”

Rosie blew bubbles.

“Yeah,” she said, “That’s what your dad did too, the first day I saw him. Then he peed on me. It was a good start.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did. It was hilarious. Mum was changing you and you lay there on your bunny blanket and peed on me and Mum said you were marking your territory.”

John rolled his eyes.

“I didn’t mind so much,” Harry admitted, her eyes still fixed on Rosie’s face. “You turned out okay.”

*

**_And the days passed…_ **

Sherlock texted right up until the vicar starting speaking of blessings and water. _If the dog can’t swim, neighbour is the killer_

Then he put his hands behind his back, phone still balanced in his fingers.

Molly put an arm behind Sherlock’s back and confiscated the phone.

" _Sherlock_."

"Religious nonsense."

“You’re her father too,” she hissed fiercely into his ear, “Mary said so. _Be_ here for her.”

He looked like he would argue, but her fierce look became more ferocious.

“I’ll always be here for her,” he said, earnest.

Her expression softened and she patted his hands. “I know.” But she didn’t give back the phone. He didn't complain. 

Afterwards, he took Rosie for a walk in the church graveyard, cuddled close to his body in the baby sling. They found him talking to her beside a lavender hedge, Rosie blowing bubbles and taking a vivid interest while Sherlock explained bees to her.

*

“I met Emma at the neonatal clinic,” Mary said, introducing the young woman to Sherlock, “She’s concerned about her brother.”

Emma shifted the baby in her arms. “Mary says you might be able to help me. Danny is behaving very oddly, and I can’t understand it. He won’t meet Caleb. The baby.” She looked at the infant and then up again. “I know it seems trivial, but he was so excited before the birth. He gave us this cute Star Trek blanket, bought a mobile of all the Enterprises, he was just thrilled, and now he won’t come near me or the house. We haven’t fought, he gets on with my wife, Lee – they’re both huge sci-fi geeks, I just can’t fathom the reason for it. I know it seems trivial, but…”

Sherlock, staring at the baby with a furrowed brow, said, “It has nothing to do with the baby.  I mean, look at him.”

John’s lips pooched out, half warning, half trying to see what Sherlock was seeing.

“What’s wrong with Caleb?” asked the woman, startled.

“Nothing. He’s an ordinary baby. Nothing startling or interesting about him at all. Very dull, as babies go.” As she drew an offended breath, Sherlock waved his hand. “Not his fault, of course. Not every baby can be Rosie. Nevertheless, the child shows no signs of birth defects, or of any especial gifts. You have unremarkable baby, hardly surprising, since you are an unremarkable woman. Oh don’t be offended. Almost everyone is unremarkable.”

“Except Rosie,” said Emma waspishly.

“She has remarkable parents. It’s only to be expected. That’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is the blanket in which you’ve wrapped Caleb. The symbols on it are in Klingon.”

That shocked John into speech. “They’re _what_ now?”

“Chris Melas, you remember him?”

“We ended up dressed as ninjas having a mock fight with him on Shaftsbury Avenue and the internet spent a week posting photos to debate whether I dress left or right, so yeah, I remember Chris Melas.”

“Wish I’d seen _that_ ,” muttered Mary.

“Anyone can see you dress left. But you continue to miss the point. Melas introduced me to Klingon and I immediately saw its possible use as a code…”

“I don’t understand,”

“This,” Sherlock jabbed at the blanket, “Is a message. To Lee. Asking her to run off with him.”

Emma’s eyes opened wide. “Oh my god. Oh my god, are they… are they having an affair?”

“Obviously not,” Sherlock said, “She’s home, your brother won’t visit, either because he’s ashamed or because she told him to piss off. I’d ask her about it, if I were you.”

A soft wail emitted from the baby monitor. John put down notepad and pen and made for Sherlock’s room, where they’d put Rosie down for her nap.

“Case solved,” said Sherlock decisively. “Bye bye Caleb.” He ignored Emma, waved to the baby and went to fetch his violin, because playing soothed Rosie when she was fractious after waking.

“Solved,” said Mary with an encouraging smile, “Perhaps have a word with Lee, hmm?”

*

_Ammo._

Ajay presses into the shadow of a side door and watches the rain fall. He shivers.

It is one thing to say he will find Agra. It is another to find her.

He knows her real name is Mary.  Her eyes are blue. He met her. They talked.

He trusted her. His life was in her hands, so often.

What was his life worth to her?

_Ammo._

It rains and it rains, fat drops exploding on the footpath. The puddles are dimpled with it. The sound is white noise.

He coughs and it hurts every muscle, every joint. It hurts and doesn’t, because he is so used to hurt.

He pulls his threadbare coat around his bent body. He puts his hands inside the coat to keep them warm. One hand he pushes into his armpit. The other rests on the gun.

He’ll ask why, before he takes his eye for a ruined eye.

**

**_And the weeks passed…_ **

John wondered why the new constable smiled at him as he arrived at the crime scene, but it warmed him through and he smiled back. He was tired from interrupted sleep, working at the clinic, pursuing cases with Sherlock and managing the occasionally fractious but actually surprisingly smooth process of having two partners. And, yes, also all the excellent sex. Tired, but a good tired.

But damn it, pretty women still smiled at him sometimes. Felt good, even if he had no intention of responding to it. Even if he'd had the energy.

Sherlock smiled at him, just as warmly, and that made John wake up from toenail to eartip. That never got old.

“You’ve been changing Little Watson,” Sherlock said.

“Just before I got your text.”

Sherlock plucked a plastic flower from behind John’s ear. John’s eyes widened, and then he sighed, feeling like a twat.

Sherlock tucked the flower behind his own ear. “Don’t be like that,” he said quietly, “Mary and I think you’re lovely. Especially in a fez.”

That made John laugh and feel very much better. “So where’s the body, hmm?”

*

The boy wept against Mary’s shoulder, unable to look while John examined and treated his broken fingers.

“You haven’t gone to the police?” Sherlock asked, pacing.

“Wh-wh-who’d believe me?”

“I do,” said Sherlock emphatically, and that seemed to help, at least as much as Mary’s kindness and John’s steady, gentle touch as he splinted his swelling hand.

“You need x-rays to have this properly set, Jay,” John said, sounding thrillingly competent (not that Sherlock would have verbalised it quite like that, but also, it’s exactly how he said it in his own head).

“Don’t worry,” Mary told Jay, “We’ll find out who’s at the bottom of this and fix it.”

“All I want is to be left alone.”

Sherlock crouched in front of the boy and, without touching him, gazed earnestly into his tear-red eyes. “Difference is not a bad thing,” he said, “You deserve better. We’ll see that you get it. As much as we can. Do you have somewhere safe to stay?”

“My Nan. She’s… she’s good to me.”

“We’ll be in touch.”

Jay rose, sniffing. “Thanks Mrs Watson, for suggesting I come.”

“My pleasure, Jay. We’ll get this sorted out.”

Four hours later, Jay’s father Evan was in custody for setting the booby traps in Jay's letterbox, garden, his oven, the stairs. Evan raged and then later cried, shamed, not by his treatment of his son but by the revelation of all his secrets. Sherlock had given him a free character reading and not spared any of the sordid details.

Later, Mary found John rocking their baby in his arms. He hadn’t even treated his grazed knuckles, earned in the fracas when Evan tried to break into Jay’s Nan’s house. He just rocked his little Rosie and sang to her.

*

_Ammo._

He has lost weeks to pain and fever since he returned. He has lost days to hunger and confusion. Without papers, he can’t access help from government services. He can’t get papers because everyone who knew him thinks he’s dead.

And he was. He is.  Ajay Sastry died. And was brought back to life and died again. Twice, he thinks.

Three times now, counting this hospital.

Pneumonia from the rain and the soaking wet clothes and the pervasive London damp and sleeping rough. Mud and cold concrete. Delirium.

He’s lost the gun. Ajay thought it might be in the Thames. Or it might be in the doorway where he fell asleep and fell into a fever.

Ajay nurses his revenge like he nurses his pain, not for motivation, not to keep the embers burning, but because he has no choice. He doesn’t remember any name but hers, some days.

_Agra. Mary. Tell me why._

Some days he doesn’t want revenge. He only wants to understand.

Other days.

Other days he wants revenge.

*

**_And the months passed…_ **

“As ever, Little Watson, you see but do not observe.” Sherlock regarded John’s chair sternly. Rosie was propped up in it in a baby’s chair, surrounded by cushions and soft toys. She gaaahed at him.

“That is hardly a logical argument,” he told her with mock severity. “I need hard logic, not romantic whimsy. You fail to connect actions to their consequences. Now, for the last time...” he handed her the rattle she had just thrown away, “If you want to keep the rattle, do not throw the rattle, hmm?”

“Gaaah!” She took the rattle and threw it at him, then giggled with delight. Sherlock failed to duck in time and it bounced off his chin. He sighed.

“Sing to her,” suggested Mary sleepily from where she lay on the sofa, her feet in John’s lap. John had fallen asleep while rubbing her feet.

“ _I know who I’ll be, don’t know if you see,”_ he sang, “ _I’ll start like a seed and I’ll grow like a tree. You’ll hang your love from my branches and leaves. Just watch me_ …”

Mary fell asleep. Rosie gurgled happily at him. She picked up a toy rabbit and sucked on its ear. Then she threw that at Sherlock, hitting him right in the nose, and her gurgling got happier.

“You’ve got your father’s aim,” Sherlock told her approvingly, “And your mother’s sense of humour.”

Little Watson grabbed another toy and threw it at Sherlock. This one hit him on the forehead.

“And your persistence,” said John fondly from the sofa.

“Hmm.”

But Sherlock smiled, and didn’t mind at all when the teething ring she threw hit him on the ear, and she squealed and bounced in her seat with delight.

*  
“Take the case on, Sherlock. For me.”

“It’s dull.”

“Then it won’t be any trouble to solve.”

“I have six cases already on.”

“Liar.”

“Four, but the other two are developing…”

“Cut it out, Sherlock. I know it’s a pain, I know it’s not even a four on your scale, but I owe Blake, and this accusation isn’t fair. She’s a lot of things, but she’s no thief, and she’ll lose her job in the Department if she can’t be cleared. I’d go myself, but Rosie’s teething, and...”

“All right. I’ll meet with her.”

“Thank you.”

*

_Ammo._

Ajay has exhausted everything. His body, his mind, his hope, even his revenge. He can’t begin to know where to find her.

All he wants now is to be warm again. Just once before he dies, he wants to be warm again.

He hangs around the streets near the old HQ, where he used to report in. He fears-hopes-fears someone will recognise him. But why would they? He doesn’t recognise himself these days. Bent like a corkscrew, now. Scarred. He mutters, awake or asleep.

But this coffee shop here, where he once flirted with a beautiful woman, and complained about the paperwork for overtime, this place, they have a pay it forward scheme. He can get coffee here, if he’s lucky, and someone who either knows how hard it can be, or has no idea at all, has paid for a stranger to be warm.

Ajay asks. The woman behind the counter obliges. Soon he’s sipping a cup of soup – better even than coffee for warming belly and bone deep – though relegated to a crate in the alley by the kitchen, where his appearance or more likely his smell won’t alarm the other patrons.

He can see through the open kitchen door past the counter and into the café.

He can see people in suits and the closed expressions of the Service. He doesn’t know them, but he knows people like them.

 _Knew_. He _knew_ people like them.

It’s comforting, though, to be so close to his old life.

A flash of red.

A flash of laughter.

_Ammo._

He knows this one, he does, oh god, he does. He knows her.

She’s holding a baby and talking to a man, tall with curly hair, and another, short, military bearing. And a woman, who is the kind of person who used to be his people.

But the other four aren’t important.

Only her. The woman in red.

Agra.

Ajay rises and pushes through the kitchen, despite half-hearted protests, into the café proper, and he’s groping for a gun he no longer has.

“Agra,” he croaks. “Agra. You bitch.”

They turn, Agra with the baby and the men and the woman, and he can see they’re all dangerous but he doesn’t care.

“Ammo,” he says, “You killed me.”

“Ajay? Is that... oh god, Ajay is that you? Oh my god. Oh my god, it is. Ajay. Ajay!” She’s carrying a baby but she steps towards him. The tall man intercepts, speaking urgently to her. Ajay can’t hear what curly says, or Agra’s reply.

“You killed me,” he says and he raises his arm with the ruined fingers, but not far, because his spine won’t let him. “You killed me,” he repeats. He stumbles as he tries to go to her, with his fists clenched, because he stumbles often now.

He’s still saying it, _you killed me_ , between sobs, when the short military man reaches him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lullaby Sherlock sings is Angie Hart's [ Asleep.](https://youtu.be/rBHpgTTMRnk)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ajay has failed, but at last he is warm. His story unfolds. If Agra didn't betray him - who did? _Ammo._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note new tags added as a warning for the next chapter.

_Ammo_

Ajay knows he failed. But he’s warm. For the first time in a long time, he’s warm. The bed is firm and the sheets are clean. Everything smells sharp, of antiseptic and bleach, but underneath it is that scent of flowers. The perfume comforts him.

And then it frightens him.

And then it makes him rage.

“Where is she? Ammo. I’ll kill the bitch.”

“Ajay? I need you to calm down.”

Ajay can’t move. He weeps.

“She killed me.”

“Ajay, I need you to look at me. Look at me. Good. My name is Dr Watson. I know you’ve been through a lot.”

“She killed me.”

“You’re safe now.”

Ajay doesn’t believe him. The doctor moves slowly around him, as though a sudden movement might crack the world in two.

“You’re in St Bartholomew’s hospital. We’ve got a private room for you. You’re safe. I’m going to give you something for the pain.”

A pinprick in his arm. Ajay struggles. He knows what those mean.

This doctor has the needle in and out, smooth, sudden. Ajay hardly felt it. He waits to go under. He fights the drag he knows is coming.

It doesn’t come.

The pain… abates.

“I want to check your injuries. Will you let me do that, Ajay?”

Ajay is so fascinated by the lack of pain he nods. The doctor’s hands on him a firm and confident. Strong. Sure. Gentle. He talks the whole time, explaining what he intends to do before he does it; saying what he’s doing while he does it; thanking and encouraging him as moves his hands away.

Ajay wants to trust him. He wishes he could.

“Is Agra going to finish me now?” Ajay asks, and finds he is too tired to fight it any more. He died a long time ago.

“No,” says Dr Watson. “We’re going to help you.”

“No,” says Ajay. He hasn’t the strength to say that isn’t possible. But it’s so nice to be warm.

“Agra never hurt you,” says the Doctor. “She wants to help you.”

“Ammo killed me.”

“You’re not dead, Ajay. I know you’ve suffered, but you’re alive. You’re home. And we’re going to look after you.”

His kindness makes Ajay want to weep again.

“Tell us what happened,” says Dr Watson.

Ajay realises other people are with them. He doesn’t recognise the tall one with curly hair. The man next to him, though. He knows Antarctica.

“Sir?”

“Mr Sastry,” says Antarctica.

“Mongoose,” he snaps angrily. Code names. Code names are important. His name is all he has left and he’s not giving it to just anybody.

“Quite right. Mongoose. We have a traitor in the ranks. We suspected as much. And now here you are.”

“Agra, sir. Ammo.”

“Tell us what happened.”

Ajay tells them.

*

_Tbilisi, 2009_

_Mission: free the ambassador and her husband from the hostages._

_Field Agent: Mongoose. Handler: Agra_

Mongoose breaches the perimeter and makes his way into the building.  Where possible to do so silently, he has despatched the enemy combatants.

Mongoose waits in the shadows of an upper gallery. His targets are seated at a table, draped in blankets. Before them is a chess set.

“What do you think?” says the Ambassador to a guard in Georgian uniform, nodding at the interrupted game. “Mate in two?”

“I will shoot you,” says the Georgian.

“Don’t antagonise them, darling,” says the ambassador’s husband.

“Oh, what else is there to do? Chess palls after three months. Everything palls.”

“They’ll send someone soon.”

“We seem to have put a lot of faith in “they” to little reward. But I have something up my sleeve. I’ve got Ammo.”

“Ammo?”

The voice in Mongoose’s ear tells him back-up is here. _Time to get this show on the road, sunshine._

Mongoose makes his move.

Five shots. Guards gone. Mongoose drops from the upper gallery and holds out his hand.

“Madam Ambassador.”

“What took you so long?”

“Traffic’s a bitch.”

Mongoose herds his targets out, directed by Agra, the voice in his ear.

And then Agra’s voice crackles. “Mongoose. Mongoose, report!” she says, “Fuck. Mongoose, stick to the plan. Back-up is coming. Get the hostages to the courtyard.”

She doesn’t hear him when he reports back.

In the courtyard, a dozen Georgian soldiers, unaccounted for in reconnaissance, appear. They drag someone into the centre of the cobblestones.  They raise his bowed head, streaked in blood.

“Ajay, surrender,” says Alex – his backup. “Ammo sent these bastards the plan. We’re fucked.”

“Who’s Ammo?” asks Ajay, gun raised, shifting point-to-point. Whatever target he shoots first, the other will kill either Alex or himself. If Alex, he may take down a second target.

They won’t shoot Alex first. He’s already out of play.

“She sold us, man.”

A man with gold teeth shoots Alex in the head.

Mongoose shoots three of the Georgians before they bring him down with a flash grenade. He’s calling Agra for help but she doesn’t reply.

Agra has gone.

Agra has abandoned him to the enemy.  
  
*

_Georgia, 2010_

Mongoose is tied to a chair and the bones around his eye socket are broken. His fingers are broken. His knee.

His spirit, though, is fierce. He listens to every word, when he is awake enough to hear. The man with the gold teeth is singing to him.

“ _Ammo. Ammo. Ammo-o-o-o._ Awww. He’s passed out.”

“It’s no fun when they pass out,” says the one who broke Mongoose’s fingers. “We’ll come back later.”

“What would he do if he knew, huh?” says the one with the gold teeth. “About the English woman?”

“What would _you_ do to a traitor?”

“Maybe we’ll tell him one day. If he lives that long.”

“ _Ammo_. Huh. It’s funny. It’s a funny English joke.”

*

_London. Now._

“They tortured me. Not for information. Not for anything but fun. They thought I’d give in, die, but I didn’t. I lived.” Ajay took a deep breath and held it, to feel the stretch in his lungs, the expansion of his rib cage, the _thump thump thump_ of his heart. Yes. _Alive._ Warm at last, the pain a dull ache which is as good as painless after all these years. The fevered weeping and torment had abated too. He almost felt himself again.

“Eventually they forgot about me,” he continued, “Left me rotting in a cell. Six years they kept me there, until one day… I heard gunshots beyond the room where they were… at it again.  One left, then the other to find him. So many gunshots. Somebody came into the room, but they ignored me. Thought I was dead already, maybe. It took a while, but I got to the… the tools they’d left behind. Picked the lock on the chains around my feet. After everything they’d done I just… crawled out.”

“Oh, god, Ajay, I’m so sorry.” Mary's voice was anguished. Once Ajay had calmed enough, and could be reasoned with, she'd joined the others in this quiet room. She'd been there before, Ajay knew. He'd smelled her perfume. And here she was, holding an infant. Warm and real. The Agra he remembered from before.

Ajay looked at Mary solemnly. “I thought you’d done it.”

“I didn’t. I would never.”

Ajay believed her this time. He’d had rest, and food, and he was so warm. The rage he nurtured against Agra seemed like smoke, vanished in a wind. He couldn’t see her holding that little baby and think of her as a killer. Antarctica swore it too. She’d been investigated, more thoroughly than even she knew. There was a traitor in the team somewhere, but Mary Morstan wasn’t it.

“You know, all the time I was there, I just kept picking up things – little whispers, laughter, gossip: how the clever agent had been betrayed.”

“What did you hear when you were a prisoner,” prompted Curly, Antarctica’s brother. Sherlock, that was it. Agra’s lover, from what Ajay could read. Dr Watson’s lover too. Those three. They were tight together. Even Mongoose could still see that. “What exactly did you hear?”

“You can tell him,” said Antarctica.

Ajay hesitated. Shuddered. “Ammo. Every day as they tore into me. Ammo. Ammo.” His voice trembled. “Ammo. Ammo.”

Mary took his hand. “You’re safe now Ajay.”

“They talked about how funny it was I’d been betrayed by the English woman. How funny that her code name was Ammo.”

“And you naturally assumed this was Mary,” said Sherlock.

“No other women in my line of command.”

“Alex told you that Ammo had revealed the mission plan.”

“ _She sold us_. That’s what Alex said before they killed him. The ambassador said the name too. Like she thought help was coming from Ammo.”

“You never spoke to Ammo yourself?”

“No. I’d already lost contact with Agra.”

 Sherlock began muttering to himself. Ajay watched him, puzzled, trying to read his lips. He jumped when Mary touched his wrist.

“We’ll find out who did this,” she promised.

Sherlock stopped abruptly. Whirled on his heel.

“How’s your Latin, brother dear?”

“My Latin?” asked Antarctica.

“Amo, amas, amat.”

“I love, you love, he loves. But… Ah. I see.”

Ajay didn’t. “What’s this?”

Mary’s look of surprise turned to a scowl. “Not ‘ammo’ as in ammunition,” she said to Ajay. “’Amo’ as in Love. In Latin.”

“What has that…?”

“You’d better be right, Sherlock,” said Antarctica darkly, lifting his phone to make a call.

“Wait,” said Sherlock. He was pacing the room again. “That doesn’t make any sense. What possible gain is there for Lady Smallwood in this?”

“Lady Smallwood?” asked Dr Watson.

“Code name 'Love',” said Sherlock, “She headed the enquiry into … the Magnussen incident. With Langdale. Porlock took the notes.”

“How the hell did you know the code names?” asked Antarctica waspishly.

His brother only grinned sharply and resumed pacing. “Amo. Love. Too obvious. Why would she use her own call sign? If Agra’s comms were put out of commission, she could have pretended to be Agra on a crackling line, or used another known code. Even if she hadn’t expected any survivors to out her, she’d have taken precautions. Smallwood isn’t an idiot. Whoever did this was careful. Cunning. Clever. It isn’t Lady Smallwood. Another woman used her code name.”

“ _What_ other woman?”

“Who else would have known about the mission? What did your investigation show, Mycroft?”

“That the department was airtight.”

“Yet it wasn’t.”

“No. But no other women were in the chain of command in that mission.  One of the men might…”

“Do a Lady Bracknell?” suggested Sherlock. “Your own rendition was very fine, Mycroft, but even back then, nobody would have mistaken teenaged you for a woman over the phone.”

Mary was frowning. “Porlock, you said. The stenographer. Her name is Norbury. Wasn’t Mrs Norbury the stenographer for the inquiry into Ajay’s mission?”

“Yes. But she’s a _stenographer_. A _secretary_ …” said Antarctica.

“You’d be amazed what a secretary picks up,” said Mary.

Sherlock wheeled around again. “Norbury. Stenographer. She doesn’t happen to work in the same building as your friend Blake, does she?”

“I don’t know,” said Mary. “Why?”

“The thefts Blake’s being blamed for. Far from petty.  Valuable losses, in fact. A diamond ring. An opal necklace. A Rolex, bought by a colleague as a gift for her husband. ”

“Yes,” said Mary. “It can’t be connected, surely?”

“I don’t know yet. But thefts like that are more easily done by a woman than a man. The ring left in the lady’s loos, vanishes. The necklace catch snagging, perhaps an older woman offering to untangle hair from the catch and instead loosening it so that it will fall. A woman going through another’s handbag, pretending it’s her own. And somehow your friend Blake ends up under suspicion. The opal necklace, wasn’t it, found in her coat pocket? Hardly in the same league as selling out an agent, but there’s a similar mindset. High value, divert the blame. Maybe not. Something to consider.”

“Something to ask,” said Antarctica grimly. He was on the phone. A few short questions later, he rang off.

“Norbury is on her lunch break. At the London Aquarium, it seems. Perhaps I need to have a short conversation. I’ve despatched an agent to keep an eye on her.”

Mary rose. “I’m coming with you.”

“Hardly.”

“This affects me, Mycroft. If she’s the one, she betrayed our mission. My mission. I want to be there when you ask her about it.”

Ajay threw back the hospital sheets. “I’m coming too,” he said.

Discussions were brief, terse, intense. So much at stake for everyone. Everyone was adamant. Ajay would go. Mary would go. Sherlock and John would go with her.

Molly took no persuading at all to take charge of her goddaughter, with a promise to take Rosie to Baker Street and her Gran Martha, to wait there for her parents to come home.

Molly raised Rosie’s chubby hand to wave goodbye to her Mummy and Daddy and Papa. Mary blew her baby a kiss.

“Goodbye sweetie! Mummy loves you! I’ll be home soon.”

Rosie squealed and bounced in Molly’s arms.

*

_Sherlock remembers how fast it happened._

_The bullet, so fast, so fast, so fast. Bang and blood. Bang. Like that. No breath. And the other one. Bang. Blood. Scream._

_Bang bang. So fast._

_But he remembers it slow._

_Slow. Slow. Slow._

_The finger squeezes._

_One bullet leaves the chamber; a second._

_The bullet enters one body and the breath stops._

_The second enters another body and then a scream._

_So. Slow. Light through treacle. Interminable._

_The dot of blood on her shirt, spreading, blooming like a time-lapsed flower blooms. The strange shudder in her body before her body simply… stopped._

_Sherlock remembers the terrible grace of how she fell. A ribbon of humanity falling, curling, dropping to the floor._

_Behind her is the scream. Short. Sharp. Like a distant crack in the glass. He thought the aquarium had shattered. That or his heart._

_Slow slow slooooooow._

_Mostly he remembers her bright blue eyes. One moment, the sun shining out of them, then next moment._

_The next moment, oh god._

_*_


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It all happened so fast, though it began slowly, beneath the shadows of sharks. Death has come to Samarra.

It all happened so fast. 

It began slowly. Under the shadows of sharks gliding overhead.

Norbury was waiting for them at the aquarium. Smoking, nonchalant, impatient, bitter. Her contempt was palpable and she lifted the cigarette to her lips. Dragged deep on it. Puffed a smoke ring and then another inside it.

“Joining me for lunch, Mr Holmes?” Tap tap of ash on the floor. She enjoyed that tiny transgression, too. Might be her last; wouldn’t be her favourite; but she enjoyed it.

“You know why we’re here,” said Mycroft flatly. The agent who’d followed her emerged from watery shadows, taking his place alongside another agent. Alongside the others in that domed space. Agra and Mongoose. Maiwand and Bunsen.

She stood under the sharks. Blue light and water rippling on her skin. It made her look like one of them, or it did, when John remembered it afterward. 

“I know the jig is up,” she said. The slightly dithery, frumpy stenographer who yearned for an iced lolly no longer made had been sloughed off. This hard creature remained, blowing smoke rings. “You sent a ghost after me. Of course I noticed. I know them all. I’ve taken the notes, filed the reports. I watch everything.”

 “You sold secrets,” said Sherlock.

“I did.” Norbury smiled. Blew a smoke ring. Tap tap ash on the floor.

“How long?” demanded Mycroft.

“Oh, years and years and years. Quite the hobby.”

“Why?” demanded Mary, her expression a model in fury, but her hand was held out, beseeching.

“Why does anyone do anything? For the money, of course,” said Norbury, “I wanted more and I realised I could take it. So I did. I bought a nice cottage in Cornwall on the back of it.”

“You got greedy,” said Mycroft.

“I got unlucky,” she countered. “The ambassador in Tbilisi found out. I thought I’d had it. Then she was taken hostage in that coup. I couldn’t believe my luck! That bought me a little time. You sent Mongoose in to free her, with Agra as the handler, and,” she shrugged, smiled, “Lady Smallwood gave the order, but I had the contacts and the codes. I sent another order to the terrorists with a pretty little clue about her code name should anyone have an enquiring mind. Seemed to do the trick.”

“And then what?” demanded Mycroft. “You just _stopped_?”

“Your inquiry got too close. And I was tired of the mess of it all. Agra had moved departments. Everyone was dead.” She sighed and peered past those standing at the front, to the bent man, leaning on a walking stick, beside them. “Or so I thought. Hello  Mongoose. Cobra got your tongue?”

“You missed it,” said Sherlock suddenly. “The danger. You stole the ring and the watch. You took the necklace and planted it on Blake.” 

“I missed buying expensive things,” Norbury said, shrugging, tapping ash onto the floor. “And Blake’s a sniffy little bitch.” 

Mary’s beseeching hand had curled into a fist. Beside her, John placed a hand on her arm, attempting to be reassuring.

But something was wrong. He knew what surrender felt like on the battlefield. This was not it.

Norbury dropped her spent cigarette to the floor. Twisted her shoe on the ember. Adjusted her handbag, hand on the opening, as though to stop it slipping.

“They tortured me,” growled Ajay, “For _years_.”

“Not my intention. You were supposed to be dead.”

“You betrayed us.” The cane he leaned on, given to him by that kind Dr Hooper at the hospital, rattled on the floor in his jittering grip.

“I betrayed my whole country, Sastry. You’re the least of it.”

“Yes, you’ve done remarkably well for a _secretary_ ,” sneered Mycroft. “You’re, what? Widowed. Your wedding ring is at least thirty years old, but you still wear it on another finger. A sentimental attachment. But you’re single, or so I imagine, given the number of cats you share your life with. Two Burmese and a tortoiseshell, judging by the cat hairs on your cardigan. A typical bitter, lonely, crazy cat lady with a drink problem and an inadequate little life. You sold your country’s secrets and your own honour for trinkets.”

He made a noise of disgust and waved his hand. “I’ve had quite enough of this inane chatter.” A flick of the tip of his umbrella and his agents began to move.

It began slowly.

Then it happened so fast.

Norbury’s handbag clattered to the floor, deliberately dropped clear, and the hand she had dipped into it held a pistol, the barrel of it pointing at Mycroft.

Norbury’s voice was sharp as teeth. “I suppose this means you won’t consider letting me go free to live my inadequate life?”

“After what you did?” snarled Mary, starting towards Norbury, and the barrel moved a fraction towards her.

Sherlock stretched an arm in front of Mary to make her stop. ( _Later he thought, he thought all the time, he kept thinking, I should have stood in front of her._ ) John’s hand closed over her elbow. ( _Later he thought, all the time, every time, I should have pulled her away. Pushed her behind me_. )

At the same time those men were halting her progress, the door slammed shut on Vivian Norbury.

“Don’t be stupid,” said Mycroft, as final as that.

The agents moved to apprehend her.

One shot.

Bang.

Ajay lurched towards the woman who had destroyed him, cane raised.

Second shot.

Bang.

The cane came down on her head as the agents seized her.

*

Hate, for Ajay, was more than a stative verb. It had been active. Burning. When he saw Agra at that café with those lovers of hers, he had expended his last fragile energy in hating her.

Ajay had hated Agra with everything left in him for so long that it was a shock when that sustaining hate evaporated. So suddenly. With so little cause.

It was as simple as needing to pee.

In the hospital, he’d leaned on the walking stick that she'd given him. Dr Hooper. The sweet one. Little bit of sharp underneath. A guard ghosting behind them, but Molly had felt Ajay was no real threat. He could hardly walk, poor man.

Inching for the loo, he heard them. Agra speaking to those men. An infant’s voice burbling behind.

“I’ll kill her,” Ajay muttered, too exhausted to act on it.

Dr Hooper, who knew nothing at all about any of it, said, “Don’t say that. Mary didn’t do this to you. She wouldn’t. There’s been a mistake.”

“No.”

“Yes. She’s a good person. I saw her when they brought you in here. How upset she was that you’d been hurt.”

“She’s a liar. She killed us. Alex. Me.”

“You’re not dead, Mr Sastry, and Mary, Sherlock and John are going to find out what really happened. I promise. It’s what they do.”

He didn’t believe her. He _knew_. Ajay knew what had happened.

But after, when she and the guards were helping him back to his room, he heard Agra again, and with her this time, the voice of Antarctica.

“Why should I say hello? She’s four month’s old, for God’s sake. It’s not as though she’ll understand.”

“And this is your Uncle Mycroft,” Agra was saying, her tone warm-teasing, the way he remembered from when he trusted her with his life. “You haven’t met him yet because he pretends to be too busy to come to either one of our houses. He even waits to make sure you're not at Baker Street before he comes to see your papa. Your daddy and I think Uncle Mycroft is a silly billy. A silly silly billy. “

The baby giggled. Ajay turned, trying to see, and there they were, through a window, in a room beyond. Antarctica looking at the child with disdain until Agra turned her adoring gaze on the small blonde babe, and then with a poignant wistfulness, a sorrowful nostalgia. Then Antarctica’s face went blank. 

“We’ll find out who did this to him, won’t we?” he heard Agra say, rocking the child in her arms.

“Oh, we’ll find the traitor out.”

“We’d better. I want them to _pay_.”

“For betrayal of Queen and Country or for making you lose an agent?”

“For what they did to _Ajay_.”

“You always did take things very personally.”

“It is personal. I can’t undo what’s done, but we can give him justice.”

“You’re far too idealistic for this business. You’re definitely better off with that pair of fools in Baker Street.” And then Antarctica’s voice faded away.

 When Agra came to speak to Ajay, to explain what his ruination had looked like from her side, to describe the search for the traitor… he believed her. Hers was the voice he had always trusted; and Antarctica. It took less energy to believe than to hate.

And then they realised - Vivian Norbury.

Until he saw Norbury, and knew what she’d done to him. He found strength to hate again then.

His revenge was two vicious blows with a hospital cane against an old woman’s temple.

Revenge too late for the two more scores now in need of settling.

_*_

_It happens so fast._

**_Bang._ **

There under the rippling blue shadows, a little bloom of red on her white blouse. Sherlock does what he has never done and turns his back on the enemy as Mary falls against his outstretched arm. He turns to catch her as she falls, with terrible grace. Fold and flutters down. He turns and tries to catch her. Her blue eyes are wide and so blue and full of life.

So blue and bright and blank.

**_Bang._ **

A scream. Sharp like a crack in the glass.

Sherlock doesn’t recognise his brother’s voice, but screaming means breathing means alive and he has other concerns.

In his arms, she’s in his arms. The red bloom in her chest over her heart over her beautiful heart.

Sherlock wants to call for John to help but he has no voice.

Behind him the scream has broken down into short bursts. No words. Wailing. Whoever is in such pain must be overwhelmed with it. Agony. Sherlock wonders if he’s the one making that sound. Maybe it’s John. That sound is quivering in his own chest. It’s there in John’s face as they go to their knees on either side of her. Arms around her, as though they can keep her from hurt as she falls with terrible grace to the ground.

A crack of bone breaking. A short shriek. Another whack and crack and another sound, someone grunting with the effort of murder done too late to prevent a murder.

“Mary?” Sherlock’s voice is small. “Mary?”

John’s fingers in her throat, though it’s clear he knows.

Her eyes are open. She’s not inside them.

“John,” says Sherlock but he doesn’t know what comes next. She’s in his arms but she’s not there anymore and he doesn’t know what comes next.

“Dr Watson! Triage, now!”

John’s face changes and he’s not John now. He’s Doctor Watson. He’s Captain Watson. He’s Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers and he’s what stands between a battleground casualty and death.

*

His Mary falls and their Sherlock catches her, and John Watson knows what this is but he refuses to know what this is.

A second gunshot and someone is screaming and he should triage the battlefield and go to the casualty most in need of aid.

Enemy is down. Sastry. Good soldier. Taking out the enemy. Position secure.

Between them, he and Sherlock hold her, and they know. The bloom of blood over her precious heart. Her beautiful eyes, empty.

He takes her pulse anyway, because he refuses to know what he knows.

Someone is screaming and he knows that voice even though he has never heard it in extremis like this.

“Dr Watson! Triage, now!”

No choice now. Someone needs him. She doesn’t, anymore, no matter how much he needs her to need him now. He doesn’t want to know what he knows. He leaves her in Sherlock’s hands. He turns.

Mycroft is writhing on the floor of the aquarium. His face is white and bloodless. All the blood is on the floor.

His leg is bent below the knee. That’s not right.

But John has seen that kind of wound before.

Bullet to the left shin, five centimetres below the patella. Tibia shattered. Fibia broken. No exit wound. No spurting. No arterial damage. Shattered bone or the bullet possibly blocking arterial bleed. X-ray required.

“Give me your tie,” he demands and he’s given two. “Hold him still,” he demands. They hold him still.

“Mycroft,” he says as he ties the tourniquet above the wound, as tight as he can.

Mycroft has stopped screaming. He’s in shock. His tailored trousers are soaked in blood and piss because that’s what happens when your leg is shattered by a gunshot.

“Ambulance is nearly here,” says someone, John doesn’t know who, or care. He reaches for the umbrella he sees. He uses the second tie, demands another, there isn’t one. He hastily slides the one around Mycroft’s own neck free.

“Hold on Mycroft,” he says, “Help’s on the way.”

“Sherlock,” croaks Mycroft. He is so afraid. Not for himself.

“She didn’t shoot him,” says John. He’s busy turning the umbrella into a splint until the ambulance arrives, to stop Mycroft moving and twisting the ruined leg.

Mycroft’s fear fades, then surges back.

Someone has handed John a coat. He drapes it over Mycroft’s torso, up around his neck, to keep him warm. Mycroft is shivering.

“Stay with me Mycroft,” says John, “Help’s coming.” He takes off his own coat, lays it over the first to keep his patient warm. Shock is setting it. Mycroft’s. John doesn’t have time for shock yet.

He does not know the thing he knows. He will not know it.

The ambulance comes and he drags himself away from Mycroft. Sitting on the floor he pulls himself away.

And there she is. In Sherlock’s arms. Heavy and still as stone. As the moon. The weight of gravity, until she is all he can see.

“Mary,” Sherlock whispers, “Sshhh,” he says, “Ssshh, Mary. Ssshhh. Don’t cry.”

It’s Sherlock who is crying. He’s rocking her. “Ssshhh, Mary. Ssshhhh.”

John cups her still, still face with his bloody hands. Her face was never still before. Always so mobile, so full of expression, so full.

Someone tries to make him move. He snarls, wordless, teeth bared.

Somewhere else a bent, broken man is sobbing and brandishing a walking stick at any who come close. He’s on the floor, twisted pressed against the wall. He has no strength. He used it all to kill the person who killed him six years ago.

Near him is a body. An older woman. Head caved in and bloody.

Too late to save anybody.

John closes his eyes. He won’t look at her.

He will not know what he knows.

“Sssh,” whispers Sherlock to the dead woman they love.

John curls over her body, his forehead pushed into Sherlock’s chest. Sherlock’s arm curls over John’s back and clutches at him. Between them, they make a shield, as though, in the cocoon in which they hold her, they can yet keep her safe.

John’ grief wells out of him, deep and long: the sound of a lost soul. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A funeral. The weight of grief. And two letters.

At the end of the funeral, John stood by the grave, Rosie in his arms, and stared, dry-eyed into the middle distance.

So many people came to the service. From the department. From their cases. From Speedy’s. Angelo was there. Mary’s father, Waters, under guard. John let him speak to his granddaughter. He didn’t let him hold her. 

She was a lighthouse, John said at the eulogy in the church. He couldn’t say much, but he said that. She was a lighthouse. People came to her for help. She helped people. She helped me. Us. She was everything good.

He stopped there. Walked away from the casket covered in flowers and picked up his sobbing daughter, who Mrs Hudson was holding as she, too, wept.

Harry, who never cried, also red from weeping, sat close, hand on John's knee, and he loved her for not telling him it would be all right.

John sat dutifully in the front pew and held his little girl. He didn’t cry. He was made of stone.

Sherlock eulogised too. Mary Watson was my friend, he said.  She was more than my friend. Mary Watson laughed at me. Mary Watson could always tell when I was lying. Mary Watson saved my life before I ever knew her face. She was kind. She was generous. She was funny. She was loving. She was everything I am not.

I failed her, he said to all those people, expressionless, too weighted with grief for anything to show. A pellet of black stone in his gut, tied to the centre of his heart like an anchor, pulling it into the chasm within. His grey eyes were dry and blank. His mouth did not quiver. His spine was straight and his shoulders broad, because to bend under the weight of it would be to never rise.

I failed her, he said, and he walked out of the church.

He didn’t go to the graveyard.

He didn’t go home for three days.

*

John went home, to the apartment he had shared with Mary and Rosie and, in days full of sunshine and laughter, Sherlock.

He went through the motions. He didn’t sleep.

He didn’t sleep.

He didn’t sleep.

Sometimes he heard her voice. He heard her in the nursery or the kitchen or the bedroom. Whichever room he was not in, he heard her there.

He didn’t sleep.

Four days after the funeral, Rosie wouldn’t stop crying. When he shouted at her to shut up and Rosie yelled louder he walked outside. He punched the wall. Twice. Hard.

He let it throb and bleed and he called Molly.

Help, he said. I can’t. I’m not safe.

I’m not safe.

I can’t.

Please. Help Rosie.

*

When Molly arrived, John only stood by the open door. Inside, Rosie was screaming.

Molly went into the apartment to feed her, change her, cuddle her.

“Your daddy loves you,” Molly said to the little girl, who hiccupped tears against her shoulder. “He’s just very sad. It’ll be all right.”

It wasn’t a lie; but Molly didn’t know when it would be true.

Fifteen minutes later, Greg arrived. John was still outside. He’d been for a walk. Around the block. Hand bleeding. Swelling.

“John,” said Greg as he arrived. “I’ll take you to the hospital.”

“No,” said John. “No.” He was kneading the injured knuckles. Wincing with the pain. “This is better.”

“Come inside, at least.”

“No.” But as Greg crossed the threshold, John said, “Is she all right?”

Greg and Molly exchanged worried glances.

“She’s fine,” said Molly. “I’ve changed her. She’s having a bottle. I’ll cuddle her till she falls asleep.”

“I wouldn’t hurt her,” said John.

“We know, mate. I know it’s hard.” Greg patted John’s shoulder, but John flinched away.

“Has Sherlock been around?” Greg asked.

“No.”

“He’s back in Baker Street. You should…”

“Fuck, Greg, I can hardly get out of bed. I don’t sleep. I can’t eat.  I can hardly take care of my daughter. I can hardly…”

John slammed the heel of his hand into the wall already smudged in blood.

“I can’t.”

He breathed in, out, in out, like his therapist had taught him in those days after he was shot, and it helped, but not much.

“I’ll make tea,” said Greg.

John tried to drink it, but abandoned the cup after three sips.

A knock at the door. Molly was in the nursery, singing to Rosie to help her sleep. John sat at the kitchen table, staring into the mug of tea as though he were looking into hell and had accepted that was where he lived now.

Greg answered the knock. He spoke to the woman there. He took the letter she gave him. He brought it back to the table.

“For you,” said Greg.

It was a long envelope. Departmental yellow. Unfranked. No address. A handwritten name.

Her handwriting.

_John Watson._

“What is this?”

“That was Mycroft’s assistant. She said this was from Mary. From... look, I don’t know what’s behind this, but apparently Mary did some work for Mycroft a year or two ago. The assistant says it’s standard operating procedure that when someone’s doing field work, they can set up a Black Box, she called it. Letters and instructions and what have you, in case something goes wrong in the field. She said this was Mary’s, from just before the time Sherlock was… ah… shot. Um. Anyway, this secretary, Anthea, said she doesn’t know if it’ll help, but thought she should give it to you anyway.”

John blinked at his wife’s handwriting on the envelope.

_John Watson._

“I can’t.”

“Okay. I’ll put it away. For later.” Greg stuck the letter to the fridge with three magnets, so it would stay.

Greg and John sat at the table, silent. They listened to Molly singing to the baby.

“She says Mycroft’s doctors can’t save his leg.”

Nothing.

“You saved his life, though.”

Nothing.

“I’m sorry mate. She was something special, your Mary.”

“Don’t wait,” said John, staring into his tea. “If you love her, tell her. If she’ll have you, marry her. Don’t waste a second of it.”

Greg chewed his lip; looked away; looked back. “I do, and I have told her. I’ve asked her. She said yes.”

“Good.” John nodded. “Good.”

“We’re not in a hurry, though.”

“Not good. Be in a hurry. Do it all. Tell her every day.”

“I will.”

Molly emerged from the nursery. “She’s sleeping now, the little lamb.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you want me to stay a while?”

“Yes.”

“As long as you need.”

“I need to go out. Walk.” John inspected his bruised and bloodied hand. Swollen. He prodded at it. It was like he liked the pain of it. A distraction.

“I’ll make tea,” said Molly.

“Greg,” said John.

“Yeah, mate?”

“I love him. I love my daughter. But I. I. I. Can’t. I can’t... I…”

“I know, John. It’s all right. We’re here. We’ll help. Until you can.”

John shuddered. Shook his head. Doubting that time would come.

“If I could swap,” he said. “Me for her. I would.”

“We know.”

“I wish.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not.” Then, “I need to walk. Back in a bit.”

John left and he walked and he walked and he walked and he didn’t confess to Greg the thing he thought.

_I wish Mycroft was dead and that I’d saved Mary. **I wish.**_

*

“Sherlock?”

Silence.

“Sherlock, I’ve brought you tea.”

Silence.

“I can make coffee, if you’d rather.”

“Go away.”

His voice was cracked. Dry.

Mrs Hudson didn’t go away. She pushed the door to the flat open and carried the tea tray to the table. She poured tea, took a letter from the tray and turned.

There he was, where he’d been ever since he’d got home that morning. Sober, anyway. A shabby four day beard and hair like two birds had been fighting in it. His suit jacket was missing, and his shoes. The shirt was torn and dirty. Sleeping rough.

But sober. Clean.

“Don’t look like that,” he’d snarled at Mrs Hudson, “It’s not like I didn’t want to. I meant to. But she was bloody there. In my ear. Whispering to me. ‘Don’t you dare, Sherlock. I didn’t drag you back from the dead for you to disappear on the point of a needle. How will John ever explain it to Rosie?’ Bloody woman.”

He’d paced. Thrown things around the room. Eventually, he had squeezed himself onto the floor between the bookshelf by the window and the end of the sofa, behind the standard lamp and the music stand.  A bolt hole.

 “Bloody woman can’t let me disappear in peace,” he’d said.

Now he sat jammed in there like a wounded thing. Head on his bent knees most of the time, or arms over his head. His lips moved as he muttered to himself, sometimes.

Now, when Mrs Hudson brought him tea and the envelope, she found him peering feverishly at his phone. He swiped up, down.

“Sherlock?”

“John thinks I’m clever. He used to, at any rate. I used to, come to that. Look at this.” He held up his phone. The screen showed one of John’s blog entries.  “The Six Thatchers. Terrible name. Dull. Even the puns are better. I don’t want that tea.”

Mrs Hudson set the cup on the coffee table, within his reach. Sherlock was peering at the blog entry again.

“That idiot Beppo hid the murder weapon in a bust of Margaret Thatcher. Clever hiding place, actually. Should have left it there. I caught him because he tried to retrieve the knife. I didn’t catch him because I’m smart. I caught him because he was stupid.”

“There’s a letter for you, Sherlock.”

“Ajay Sastry was like the knife in the Thatcher bust. If he’d stayed hidden, none of this would have happened. But once he broke out; once he was back in London, it was inevitable. But I didn’t see it. I didn’t think. If Ajay was here, then the real traitor would respond. With force.”

“You can’t blame yourself, Sherlock, dear.”

“If I was smart, I’d have seen it coming. I’d have realised that Norbury had a gun in that bag and that she was perfectly willing to use it, on anybody, just for spite. I should have known this.”

“You couldn’t have stopped her.”

“Why not? I’m supposed to be clever. I stopped Moriarty, didn’t I? But I had Mycroft’s help for that. I tried to stop Magnussen. That took Mary. Even the cabbie, Hope. It was John who stopped him. I’m not clever. I was beaten by a _stenographer_.”

Mrs Hudson sat on the sofa next to him. She patted his shoulder, when he wouldn’t let her take his hand.

“Mycroft’s secretary brought you a letter. She says he’s doing well. Considering.”

He peered at her. “They’ve opted for amputation,” he said. “Too much damage. Too many bone fragments. Three surgeries in the week that followed.  They were never going to be able to save it.”

“He’s alive,” said Mrs Hudson.

“And Mary’s dead.” The Ds were sharp points. Sharp as needles.

“John still needs you. Rosie needs you.”

“She has a father.”

“She needs her papa too.”

He winced then, and hid his face against his knees. “Don’t.”

“You can’t do this to yourself, Sherlock. Please.” Mrs Hudson’s voice cracked too. She and Molly had been here in Baker Street, happy, playing with Rosie, waiting for her Mummy and Daddy and Papa to come home when Greg Lestrade arrived, face of ash, with the terrible news.

They’d lost Mary. John and Sherlock had shut down, a wall even between each other. For three days after the funeral, Mrs Hudson had feared even more for Sherlock than she grieved for John’s grief.

And she missed her Rosie Rose, that precious baby girl.

“Your death doesn’t happen to you,” said Sherlock suddenly.

Mrs Hudson didn’t contradict him. She reached for his hand. He let her take it, but he didn’t respond.

“Your own death is something that happens to everybody else,” he said. “Once it’s over, it’s not you who misses it. Mary doesn’t feel a thing any more. It’s the rest of us. It’s all we do now. Feel Mary’s death. It’s not just an absence. It’s absolute. Well. Usually.”

Mrs Hudson squeezed his hand.

“When I faked my death, this is what I did. To John, and you. Greg, I suppose. My death happened to you. I didn’t.  I didn’t know that this is what it felt like. I’m so sorry.”

Tears spilled down her cheeks. “It’s all right, dear. We understood, later. When you explained. You came back.”

“I made John feel my death. It was only meant to be for a few days. That was too long. Any minute of this is too long. Mycroft tried to explain. I didn’t understand.” He closed his eyes. “He’ll live, though. He’ll lose half a limb, but he’ll live.”

He kissed her soft hand and let it go. He breathed in and out. Shakily.

“John doesn’t need me. Rosie doesn’t. Look after them, will you?”

Mrs Hudson meant to argue with that, but instead she handed him the envelope.

“Mycroft’s secretary, that Anthea woman, brought this for you. She says it’s from Mary’s Black Box, from when you were shot in that dreadful Magnussen case. I don’t know what that’s all about, but here you are.”

Sherlock stared at the envelope. Departmental yellow. Unfranked. No address, just a name. Hand written.

 _Sherlock Holmes_.

He stared and stared.

“That’s Mary’s handwriting,” said Mrs Hudson, waving the letter at him.

“Communication from beyond the grave.” He’d clearly meant to be sardonic or scathing or something unimpressed, but his voice shook. So did his hand, when he took the envelope, and when the tore it jaggedly open with his thumbnail.

He unfolded the sheets of paper within. All handwritten on four sheets of good quality paper. Neat and steady. She’d taken time with it.

 _Dearest Sherlock_ , it began.

_If you’ve received this letter, it’s because I’m dead._

_God, doesn’t that sound like one of those cheap thrillers John loves to read. Terribly melodramatic, I know, but it’s true, and I need you to read this right to the end. Please._

_The first thing you need to know is that I work for MI6. I’ve been an analyst for a few years, but before then I worked with field agents as a handler._

_John doesn’t know any of this. It’s classified, and I’m retiring soon anyway._

_The second thing you need to know is that I’m Agra._

_Ta da!_

_Sorry.Inappropriate humour in stressful situations. You know I'm like that. I'm sorry I haven't been able to tell you. It's a bit complicated.  
_

_Obviously John doesn’t know that. I’m assuming that you haven’t worked it out yet either, though I see you looking at me sometimes with that “I’m deducing you” look in your eye. It’s that or gas, anyway._

_All right. I mustn’t joke about it. If everything goes well, this letter won’t matter. I’m only doing this mission because I owe Mycroft for tearing my brief into shreds and falling in love against protocol. We’re getting rid of Charles Augustus Magnussen. Again, assuming you don’t get him first._

_I mean to tell John, though, and you, about MI6 and Agra. I will, one day. I want to. I tried to do it at the church before we got married, but my boss intervened. Don’t blame him too much. I might have told John anyway, but then you deduced I was pregnant and it got too complicated. But one day soon, unless I really am dead and that’s why you’re reading this now._

_This Magnussen mission isn’t dangerous like your mission was dangerous, but it’s SOP, so here I am. This letter is for my Black Box. It’s supposed to be my last communication to loved ones, in case it all goes to the dogs._

_This spy business is wretched, though, and I hate all the lying it’s come to. I’ve never meant you or John harm. The very opposite. I tried to help, and then I went and fell in love. Twice. Simultaneously. It’s funny, in a way that’s not at all funny._

_I’ve written a letter for John too, Sherlock. Not exactly the same letter, but some of the same things are in both.  
_

_I keep avoiding the thing I’m supposed to be writing here, so I’m just going to write it._

_I know you love John. Not just as a friend. I know you are **in love with** John. Remember that conversation we had? _

_I’m sorry I didn’t work it out earlier. Maybe it would have been you marrying John that day. It would have broken my heart, but it would have been right._

_You are in love with him. And he’s in love with you, too._

_That makes it all sound so simple, and it’s not. He’s loves me, too. He’s told me that he loves us both._

_And for the record, I love you both too. Not just as friends. I am in love with John. And I’m in love with you._

_I said it was complicated._

_I suppose none of that is really important, though, if you’ve got this letter because I somehow botched the Magnussen mission and I’m dead._

_What’s important is this. You and I both love John Watson, and John and I both love you, and if I’m dead, then I want you to know it’s all right to be with him. I've told him that too. That he should be with you. That if you both want it, I want that for you.  
_

_Tell him you love him. I’ve told him to tell you too. It might take him a while. You know how stubborn he can be, but once he’s used to the idea there’ll be no stopping him. You just wait and see._

_Love him, Sherlock, if I’m gone. Take care of him for me. Let him take care of you too. You’re both terribly stubborn like that._

_I have to go. I’m meeting my contact, JF, tonight, and if it all goes well, this will be over and this Black Box will never be needed. If that’s the case, I suppose I’ve got other things I need to think about for the future. Other things I have to find the courage to talk to you both about, to see if maybe all this being in love with each other can work out in real life, and not just as wishful thinking._

_I hope you won’t see this letter, and that I can tell you both everything myself. Because I don’t want to lie to either of you anymore, and John needs the truth from me. No matter how ugly. No matter how it scares me. No matter what it costs me. He needs better from me. From us._

_With love,_

_With so much love,_

_Mary_

_(the Agent Formerly Known as Agra )._

Sherlock read the letter and read it and read it. He folded it and held it in his shaking fingers.

_Love him, Sherlock, if I’m gone. Take care of him for me. Let him take care of you too._

Her last request. The last thing he could do for her, and he couldn’t fail her as he’d failed to save her. He would look after John and Rosie. He would. Not only for Mary, but because he loved them.

But first.

But first.

But first he had to redeem himself.


End file.
